How Can I Watch BBC News Abroad ?

Those of us of a certain age can probably remember dashing around on holiday searching for a three day old British newspaper so we could catch up with the news. There were usually a few about but normally at hugely inflated prices and worse still it was often just the Daily Mirror available.

Of course, this has now changed completely in the digital age. Anyone with a phone, tablet or laptop can keep up to date with all the local news easily while travelling. Even in the most remote locations, there’s likely to be an internet or wireless connection available somewhere. This is all you need to access most of the UK’s News media which is available online.

However it’s not all plain sailing, you can access most of the online newspapers it’s true although some do require subscriptions. This is not the case for all the online radio and TV news broadcasts though. Most broadcast online through portals like the BBC iPlayer and the ITV Hub, yet they are all restricted from access outside the UK.

Each time any connection is made to the BBC website for example, then the IP address is recorded and checked. If the address is registered to a country other than the UK (and that includes the Republic of Ireland) then you’ll get redirected to the International version of the site which has no BBC TV and radio streams. If you try and bypass by going directly to the BBC iPlayer site, then you’ll find that none of the video streams including all the BBC live TV and News ones will work.

It’s kind of annoying, if you’re on holiday and want to keep in touch. It’s even worse for ex-pats most of whom probably expected to be able to watch UK television online without restrictions before they moved abroad. Fortunately there is a solution and you can watch BBC News abroad as we can see in the following video –

How Can I Watch BBC News Abroad

It’s a relatively simple solution and one used by literally millions of people across the world to access things like the BBC iPlayer from outside the United Kingdom. Indeed it was estimated that there were over three million connections from outside the UK watching England’s first World Cup game! This of course, should have been technically impossible.

BBC iPlayer Expand Service in 2019

The BBC is well aware that many people use these VPN services to bypass the country restrictions and to some extent accept this. However they do actively try and block these connections in specific ways;

Target services which openly advertise and market themselves as TV watching services, then get them closed down.

Monitor number of concurrent connections from individual IP addresses and block those with the most.

The problem that most of the media companies face, including the BBC is that it takes a huge amount of resources to keep tracking and blocking these connections. Which is why they only go after the obvious targets, for example by threatening legal action against hosting services they can bring down thousands of outside users instantly. If you search online you’ll come across lots of stories about a BBC iPlayer VPN not working.

This clampdown is likely to continue as the BBC tries to expand it’s digital footprint. Already they have launched a paid service called Britbox which contains loads of British TV programmes and is currently available in the USA. The problem is that it’s still more expensive than most decent VPN services and offers only a small proportion of the main BBC iPlayer service. Not forgetting that the domestic version allows you to watch all the channels live so you can watch BBC News live video anytime you like too. The VPN offers the full BBC experience plus every other UK television channels that broadcasts online too.

There’s no doubt that as the stakes rise, then it is likely that the poorest VPN services will get closed down. It is also why you should be wary of the cheapest VPN services and those with free trials. They will always be the ones with overloaded servers which at best will make streaming video painful and slow, at worst will be the first blocked because of the number of concurrent connections. You won’t enjoy the BBC news headlines with constant pauses and buffering.

Our suggestion is the one demonstrated in the video, it’s called Identity Cloaker. It’s very simple to use, and you can test the short trial first to see how it works. You’re sure to be impressed and remember it enables all the other British UK channels too like ITV, Channel 4 and 5. Even use it to watch Sky Go abroad and UK Netflix, although you’ll need subscriptions to those.

Yes Bradley, Just connect to a UK server and it will work fine. Remember though the BBC News at Ten will be at GMT times not your local one. Sounds obvious but I’ve been caught out many times missing it. Some of the news is archived but not for long so you should try and catch it live if you want.

There are a couple of free VPNs but there are a couple of things to consider. First they are generally slow, so you’ll need some patience using them for video. The second is that ALL VPNs have to be financed someway – the most famous free one is called Hola – which resells part of your connection and IP address to it’s premium users. If you’re happy with doing that it doesn’t cost anything.

Yes it’s fine just sign in as normal after you’ve enabled the UK connection. If you haven’t got an account just create one after you’ve connected to a UK server. All you’ll need is an email address and just remember to put in a UK post code when it asks, anyone will you do. You can then watch all the BBC channels including the News.